The big question to me is whether it's enabled by default, and whether it blocks requests to Google Analytics. If so, that's an interesting shot across the bow.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I assume Google does all sorts of fingerprinting (documented and not) via GA. Why else would it be free if it didn't provide a big upside for Google?
Why do they need fingerprinting? They can just give you an identifier and combine it with your login on the Google sites to connect it to your identity.
Isn't it like this that all data is gathered anyway, but site owner can access the more advanced tracers with paid subscriptions?
I don't intent to provoke FUD, I seriously don't know. This would sound like rational choice for Google since they need this data to run their business.
This is actually really concerning to me. If they blocked Google Analytics, it would severely damage that data. It'd be bad news for site owners who just want to quantify their traffic.
....so? Site owners are not guaranteed this access; their script runs on the client computer.
I say this as someone who does a lot of analytical research and re-targeting and would be hurt if this was rolled out on a larger scale; I just don't think I have a right to the data.
Imagine you were a police officer with this mentality.
"As someone who investigates lots of crimes, it's totally fine if someone invokes the fifth amendment, I don't have the right to compel them to answer."
"I mean if you don't care about something prevents you from doing your job, why even join the force?"
Doesn't seem that ridiculous a comparison to me. You don't have a right to compel something from someone else, but that doesn't meant you just have to give up at whatever task you are trying to accomplish
Kind of presuming the wrong thing there. There's still work to be done, right? Just because something would make the job easier does not mean it should be done, ethics come first.
Why is wrong for people to want to protect something they have of value, from someone else just harvesting it from them? I can see why this is annoying but can you really not see the other side of this situation?
Cookies are one way to track users. They are not the only one. Google Analytics is so ubiquitous...I can't see Google missing the opportunity to leverage it.
So Google may lose data because then they can't track you all over the web, but the websites don't because they still see you as one user.